I wanted to share this with the Reddit community because your previous posts/comments helped me realise that I may have been targeted by a recruitment scam. Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences — it potentially saved me from losing a significant amount of money.

I applied for a Senior Accountant position advertised by Regent Hiring, with a salary of £55,000–£65,000.

Job advert:
Regent Hiring – Senior Accountant job advert

Senior accountant

I completed a pre-screening interview and subsequently received an email from someone calling himself James Kingston, Careers Advisor.

The email told me that I had performed exceptionally well and was one of their strongest candidates. It then said the only area requiring attention was my lack of regulatory certifications.

They recommended two specific courses:

• ICAM – CIFA
• Accounting Principles & Compliance in Practice (APCP)

They then instructed me to enrol on one of the courses, update my CV to show the qualification as "in progress", and send them the updated CV together with my enrolment letter.

The email stated that they would submit these documents to their senior, who would then submit my CV to the hiring manager after verification.

The email I received was from:

James Kingston
Careers Advisor
Email: james@regenthire.co.uk
Regent Hiring: regenthiring.com
Telephone: 020 3310 6273 / 020 3310 6298

At first, this seemed completely legitimate because the recruitment process and communication appeared professional.

However, I started researching the company and the course provider and found multiple Reddit users describing very similar experiences involving Regent Hire and candidates being directed towards paid courses.

That's when I became extremely concerned.

What made me suspicious

The job itself is for a Senior Accountant, with responsibilities such as:

• Management accounts
• Statutory accounts
• Month-end/year-end
• VAT
• Budgeting and forecasting
• Financial reporting
• Audit support

Yet a paid AML/regulatory certification was presented as the missing requirement preventing my CV from being submitted to the hiring manager.

I am an experienced accounting professional, so this raised questions for me.

Thank you Reddit ❤️

I want to specifically thank the people who posted about their experiences before me.

Those posts made me stop and investigate before proceeding further.

I found other candidates describing similar situations, including people who said they had actually paid for courses after being told they were needed for the recruitment process.

I'm now keeping all emails, job adverts, messages and other evidence and will be reporting my experience to the appropriate authorities.

I'm posting this mainly as a warning to other jobseekers.

If you've had a similar experience with Regent Hiring / Regent Hire, or were directed to Accredited Finance Courses, please share your experience below. It would be useful to establish how many people have encountered the same process.

Please don't send money to anyone connected with a job application without independently verifying the employer, recruiter and requirement first.